Chapter 1 – Funding Needs for Transboundary Water Cooperation and Basin Development
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CHAPTER 1 FUNDING NEEDS FOR TRANSBOUNDARY WATER COOPERATION AND BASIN DEVELOPMENT
A herd of cows came to the Chu river to drink in the middle of a summer day, Kazakhstan
Chapter 1 examines the different funding needs for transboundary water cooperation, management and development. It differentiates between the core costs incurred through the mere existence of an institutionalized cooperation mechanism and the programme costs related to the development and implementation of basin management and development activities. It shows that core costs are relatively similar across joint bodies, yet the amount spent on these can vary considerably and is largely determined by the size of the RBO’s secretariat; itself determined by the RBO’s mandate and functions. Similarly, the greater the implementation mandate of a RBO, the higher its programme costs. Both cost dimensions also change significantly over time, as highlighted by the examples below.
1.1 Core costs of cooperation – through joint bodies and beyond This section focuses specifically on the costs related to the existence of a joint body for managing a shared basin – often referred to as “core costs,” “regular budget”, or “corporate services budget”. Core costs comprise those that occur due to the mere existence of a joint body and thus include the costs of staff salaries, offices, office materials and other items that ensure the functioning of a joint body, particularly its secretariat. They also include the costs of meetings of the joint body’s governing bodies, such as a Council of Ministers or a Meeting of Heads of State, as they ensure the continuous existence and functioning of the organization. It should be noted here that no clear-cut definitions exist for these terms and they are sometimes used interchangeably, although they may refer to slightly different concepts. In the narrowest sense, the “corporate services budget” can be defined as the budget for administration and services such as finance, information and communications, human resources management (Henkel et al., 2014: 12). Core costs have a similar meaning yet can be slightly broader. A regular budget is broader still and can be defined as the “permanent and recurrent budget that is being allocated or agreed upon by its member countries to sustain the regular basic operations of the institution” (Henkel et al., 2014: 12), which can also include certain project activities if deemed a regular basic operation of the joint body, such as hydrological and environmental monitoring for example. In this publication, the term core costs will be used and
